


In the Name of Science

by helloshepard



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Implied/Referenced Torture, Psychological Horror, Surgery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-14 08:26:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloshepard/pseuds/helloshepard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he starts dissecting the patient, Knock Out begins to believe his assistant may not be as dead as he once thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The human had fallen silent several minutes prior to them entering the medical bay. Knock Out didn’t really mind. He would be making plenty of noise in a little while.

“There.” With one hand Knock Out gestured to the operating table. “And do make sure the restraints are properly fastened. I don’t want it getting loose and trying to escape.”

Obediently, the Vehicons secured Silas to the table, checking and rechecking the bonds. They had overheard him tell Megatron what he had done to his faction. If the unthinkable did happen they would be the ones to blame – and the ones who would be forced to take him down at the cost of their lives. 

Knock Out smirked at the expression on the pretender’s faceplates. It was one of horror, as if he had finally realized the situation he was in as the last Vehicon exited and the door hissed closed. He began testing the restraint’s strength, trying to free himself already.

“They were your friends, Breakdown.” Not taking his optics off of the patient, Knock Out began preparing a surgical tray. A welder. He wouldn’t be needing that, unless he needed to keep the patient alive. Scalpel. Definitely. Retractor. Probably. That would go next to the pliers.

“Knock Out?” 

Abruptly his smirk twisted to form a glare. He slammed the tray down. Just as quickly his faceplates smoothed out and he smiled again.

Preparations finished, he wheeled the tray over to the operating table. 

It was only then the patient really began to panic, twisting and trying to get out of the restraints with a mad fury Knock Out hadn’t seen in a while. He was ventilating heavily as Knock Out approached, turning his missing optic away from the medic as Knock Out’s drill came out.

Knock Out was silent, letting the patient hear the sound of the drill echo throughout the room. 

“Knock Out it’s me!” he was straining, trying to get away from the drill as the medic nonchalantly began undoing the hinges in his chest armor. He needed to get to the pain receptors. “It’s Breakdown! What are you doing?”

The medic hesitated, though he did not shut off the drill. Then he spoke.

“I might have excused your pathetic attempts at tricking me if you weren’t using his voice. I think that will go first.”

Effortlessly, the chest plating came off, and Knock Out saw him for the first time. If keeping the human alive hadn’t been in his best interests at the moment, it would have been the simplest thing in the world to simply take his head off right then. He switched off the drill and began digging around, trying to find the pain receptors.

“How are you being powered?” Knock Out asked rhetorically, using one claw to push the human out of his way. “I highly doubt your fragile organic bodies are equipped to handle the Energon that’s required to power me, never mind someone Breakdown’s size.”

“Why don’t we try it?” the human’s jaw was clenched. It looked like he was in pain, though that might have had something to do with the fact that Knock Out’s claw was digging into his back.

“Hmmm. Perhaps another time. In another universe. Ah.”

The human’s face was one of utter shock. Knock Out chuckled at his mouth hanging open. He tapped the fleshy body, noting how something cracked, but the human didn’t seem able to feel it. All the better.

“Now I said I would start with Breakdown’s voice box didn’t I?” not expecting a reply and not receiving one, Knock Out smirked again. 

He straightened and grabbed the scalpel, looking from the patient’s eyes to his optics.

“This won’t hurt a bit.”

The patient began struggling again. The scientific part of Knock Out’s mind told him to start recording these reactions and continue testing the pretender’s ‘fear’ of him. Knock Out obliged.

“Knock Out stop!” 

The medic’s optics flicked back to the human, who looked back at him with a dark glare. He turned back to his target. 

“Do you remember the battles in the streets of Kaon? I’d just left the Stunticons and you were teaching me how to use the – the – I can’t remember what it’s called but--”

Knock Out sliced the plating open. Energon began to spill from the incision and dripped to the floor. 

Breakdown’s voice began to shout, to beg. Knock Out shook his head.

“I don’t know how you’ve managed to access his memory chips, but I will find out. Have no fear.”

The voice went silent with a crackle of static. Curious, Knock Out looked at the human, wondering if he had suffered any damage to his body. Satisfied, he nodded.

“Now that that’s settled we can get down to business.”

Knock Out reached behind him, still not looking away from the human, who seemed to be trying to decide if he wanted to see if he could speak or not. 

“I’m not sure if this device is capable of registering such small electrical impulses, but rest assured. If you survive what I have planned for you, I’ll make sure to ask Soundwave to send Laserbeak out for a real human monitor.”  
Knock Out attached the cord behind the human’s back, ignoring the glare and muffled grunt he got in response. 

He’d expected to hear the sound of the monitor informing him there was no Spark activity. Perhaps a tiny sound of a human heart, or whatever was keeping the patient online. Instead he was greeted with the sound of a Cybertronian life signal, beating to the rhythm of his own Spark. 

Knock Out stopped, well aware that his hands were covered in badly manufactured and volatile Energon and that one of them was in the patient’s voice box, or that the human was staring up at him with an expression he should be wary of. Pulling his hand out of the patient’s neck, he shoved the human aside, ignoring the grunt of imagined pain, and dug past the pain receptors and felt around for the latch. 

Unhooking the chamber casing, Knock Out pulled off yet more armor and plating, optics growing wider and wider as he began to see the telltale blue glow of an online Spark.

He stopped as soon as the Spark was exposed, instinctively moving to prevent the human from seeing it. He couldn’t really stop the optics from seeing the Spark, but he could prevent the eyes from seeing what only medics and bondmates should witness. His optics flicked up to the patient’s damaged optic, which stared back at him. 

Curious, he activated his drill and moved it closer to the optic. The reaction was violent. Jerking away, helm smashing into the operating table, but he probably couldn’t feel any of it. He began ventilating audibly – panting, really, and Knock Out moved back.

Transforming his hand, he touched the bare optic with one claw, as he had when Breakdown had shown up at the door so long ago. Though he flinched, there was none of the terror.  
Knock Out wanted to say it, but a quick glance at the human who was staring at him with a slightly confused expression would use anything he said against him. Instead he simply picked up the welder and began sealing the patient’s neck back together.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! It's been forever (long enough for the show to end, aha ha ha). This is another one of the fics I'm intent on finishing. Thank you everyone who gave feedback and kudos, both here and on tumblr! 
> 
> (PS: The first four chapters of this fic are on tumblr, and can be found at soundwaaave.tumblr.com/tagged/in+the+name+of+science)

“—so I believe that by rerouting his subprocessors through the human’s own brain, a portion of Breakdown’s own consciousness was able to remain online. It may even be how he ended up here!” With one hand Knock Out gestured to the surveillance footage playing on a screen. “With Breakdown influencing his mind the human could have—”

“I’ve heard enough.”

Knock Out fell silent.

Megatron took a step forward.

“Do you mean to tell me you believe Breakdown is  _alive_?” One claw gestured to a different screen showing the sickbay from one of the recently installed security cameras. “That that _monstrosity_ still has the right to call itself a Decepticon?”

Knock Out visibly shrank back.

“Well, Lord Megatron, it would be more accurate to say that—”

“And after all the trouble he has just caused this faction,  _why_ should I allow you to bring him back?”

“Technically that wasn’t Breakdown, that was the human.” Megatron raised an optic ridge, but Knock Out continued. “And after the bug’s death we could use another hard hitter, couldn’t we?”

A low growl was his only reply for a long moment.

Knock Out waited. Finally Megatron spoke.

“I expect regular reports on your progress. I do notwant this… _project_  to get in the way of your duties as my medic. And I want to know how the humans learned to achieve this level of engineering.”

Knock Out nodded quickly, not bothering to hide the smile on his face. “Of course my Lord. I would do nothing less.”

He bowed quickly and practically skipped out of the room.

Knock Out entered the sickbay, barely sparing a glance at the glaring human before turning his full attention to the readings generated by the device that was attached to the base of Breakdown’s neck cabling. The greatest amount of activity was coming from the frontal processor core, though if it was sorely Breakdown’s mind or the human’s Knock Out didn’t know. He wasn’t sure how he was going to find out.

He began pacing, pausing to rearrange the tools in their respective places as he walked in circles around the room.

“Perhaps electrocution triggered the original reaction,” he muttered to a vial of experimental green liquid. “Should I try that again?”

“What you should try,” the human said loudly. “Is letting me go.”

Knock Out smiled.

“When I learn how to separate you from Breakdown I will do just that. Then we will see the effect the thermosphere has on the human body. How does that sound?” Knock Out picked up his prod from its place in the corner and nonchalantly walked over to the operating table, activating it just to hear its reassuring humming.

He had managed to forget about the Energon he had spilled on the ground while disabling the voice box. Knock Out tripped and slid, coming to a stop only when he crashed face first into the operating table. The prod followed, hitting him in the head and rolling onto the patient’s body and delivering a sudden, powerful shock.

Knock Out managed to pull himself up with the help of the tool tray and a few choice swear words. Rubbing his face with one hand he grimaced as he felt a thin scratch marring his faceplate.

The human didn’t comment on his blunder. Checking his vital signs, Knock Out determined the exposure to the prod had managed to knock him out. His optics went to Breakdown’s, curious to see if they would shut off when their commander was inactive.

They were still online, and still staring at him, though they didn’t appear to be moving. Knock Out reached out to touch the damaged one, a gesture that felt like it was becoming customary. No reaction.

Then he looked to the monitor. The activity in Breakdown’s frontal processor was still going strong.

So did that mean that  _that_ was Breakdown? Or was the human simply dreaming?

Knock Out wiped up the spilled Energon with an old rag as his processer struggled to analyze the data it had been given. How much processing power was required to keep a Cybertronian Breakdown’s size functional, with just unconscious functions and routines alone taking up so much space? Never mind the power it would take to make him think coherently, never mind walk and talk again.

His gaze drifted to the cordical psychic patch. There was that. That would be the one sure way to see if Breakdown really was alive. He shuddered at the possibility of spending even a minute in the mind of that  _human_ and left it as his last resort.

He began pacing again, never taking his optics from the monitor. This continued for several cycles until his hand touched his faceplate and he realized that he had forgotten to fix the scratch.

Looking longingly at Breakdown’s hands and sighing, he grabbed a buffer and his can of paint. 

Ten cycles later, he was in the middle of wiping off the last of the dust from his armor when his audio receptors picked up the sounds of the human coming out of stasis.

"I’d say it’s good to have you back, but I’m not known around here for my sincerity," Knock Out said when he was sure the human was coherent enough to understand him.

The human chuckled. Breakdown’s fingers twitched.

"Why are you even  _trying?_ Your ‘friend’ is dead, and he was dead before I repurposed his body as my own.”

"You’re rather…arrogant for someone who was practically begging for mercy at Megatron’s pedes just yesterday, aren’t you?" at random, Knock Out selected a sharp implement used for scraping debris out of deep battle wounds from a cabinet. He stepped forward, making sure to let Breakdown’s bad optic see him.   

As he suspected, the human simply glared; after all, Knock Out hadn’t actually  _done_ anything to directly harm him yet, but Breakdown’s body was a different story.  It began twisting and jerking, trying to get out of his restraints. The readings on the monitor went haywire.

"I am a licensed medical professional," Knock Out said smoothly. "In a manner of speaking."

"These attempts to wear me down will not work,  _machine_.”

Knock Out moved out of the human’s normal range of vision while staying well within Breakdown’s. He permitted himself a small chuckle. 

"Really now? Is that the best you can come up with?" he put the pick down and activated his drill. "How do you know I’m not simply drilling a hole into your processor as we speak, if only to find a way to shut you up?" taking a gamble, Knock Out winked at Breakdown.

The human fell silent for a peaceful moment. Gently, Knock Out pressed the drill to the side of the operating table, allowing metal shavings to fall to the floor—and the sound to echo all around the sickbay.

"How do you know that, human _?_ How do you know  _that_?”


	3. Chapter 3

Knock Out continued drilling the empty air, occasionally pressing the tool to the operating table just to see if the human would flinch. He always reacted in the same manner, Knock Out noted in a dry, detached way, as if he didn’t realize by now his processing functions would be damaged by the activity.

He stopped and looked up as the doors hissed open and Dreadwing limped in, dragging his left leg behind him.

The human perked up at the new, obviously injured visitor.

“Dreadwing? What happened to you?”

“Yes. What…did happen?”

Knock Out glared, but the human paid him no attention. The human was strangely fascinated with the exposed wiring and plating, so he hurried to get the Seeker out of his range of vision, settling him down on one of the spare operating tables.

“The raid was…unsuccessful. The Autobots discovered our decoy and moved too quickly to take the real relic.” Dreadwing grimaced as Knock Out lifted his leg and placed it on the table and began attaching Spark sensors to his chest. “There were many casualties.”

“Well there’s nothing I can do about that.” Finished with the preliminary preparations, Knock Out injected the Seeker with a numbing agent. It shouldn’t be enough to put him out completely, Knock Out reasoned, unless Dreadwing’s fuel tanks were empty. “What about injured?”

Dreadwing blinked slowly. “Lots.”

Knock Out sighed.

“Could we get a specific number here? Do I have time to patch up your leg before I need to prepare the sickbay for triage?”

Dreadwing looked down at his leg.

“Maybe…ten. When I was there last.”

Knock Out grabbed wire mesh and pressed it into the Seeker’s leg.

“Hold it there.”

Dreadwing nodded slowly, though Knock Out doubted he would be online long enough for it to do any good.

With one final look at the human in Breakdown’s body, Knock Out began organizing tools and rearranging the materials in the space he had to work with. With two operating tables occupied, unless two other officers were injured, per table, he would have space to put two injured drones side by side. But the only officers left were Soundwave and Megatron, and it wasn’t likely that they were injured. It was even less likely they had participated.

Knock Out turned to Dreadwing for confirmation. The question died in his mouth as he saw the Seeker had fallen into stasis.

The human chuckled.

“I suppose no one bothered to tell you about this excursion?”

Knock Out forced a smirk onto his faceplates as he stacked sheeting on an easy-to-reach countertop.

“Perhaps I was too busy learning how your processor works to pay attention.”

The human fell silent, allowing him to concentrate solely on his work for a few minutes. Knock Out was in the middle of deciding where exactly to put the sedatives if he couldn’t ask Breakdown to hand him them when the human spoke again.

“I must say, medic, it will be a very enjoyable experience watching you practice your techniques on someone other than myself.”

“I don’t recall ever saying I would allow you to watch.” He glanced around the sickbay. Everything was as ordered as it could be. Only time would tell if this system worked or not. If it didn’t…

The door hissed open and two Vehicons ran in, one missing an arm. The other one looked fine. He hesitated as Knock Out directed the injured trooper to the operating table.

“If you’re not injured get out,” Knock Out said shortly, and the Vehicon scurried out. “How many more are there?”

The Vehicon sucked in a huge breath of air as Knock Out wrapped the wire mesh around the stump. “Most of us are dead, sir. But—”

“How many are  _injured_?”

“I – I don’t know.”

The door hissed open again. Knock Out grabbed the trooper’s remaining hand and pressed it to the mesh.

“Hold it there until the Energon stops.”

The Vehicon nodded.

Three more troopers ran in, two supporting a squadmate whose legs had been blown off. Energon followed their path in a bright blue trail and in a faraway corner of his mind Knock Out began to worry about someone slipping in the mess.

“Put him on the operating table.” He waved the amputee off and grabbed a sedative. As he approached the injured Vehicon the trooper began panicking, damaged voice box emitting bursts of static as he tried to get away. Knock Out paid no attention and plunged the device into a patch of exposed protoform. Almost immediately the Vehicon stopped struggling and the Energon stopped flowing so readily.

Knock Out turned to the Vehicon’s squadmates. One of them had an obvious head wound and the other had taken a shot to the chest. He made the decision in half an astrosecond.

“Keep out of the way,” Knock Out snapped, shoving past them to examine the stasis-locked trooper. If he got to him quickly enough he would live. He had plenty of spare parts, after all. The other amputee and the two with minor injuries could wait, and as long as Dreadwing didn’t online and decide to demand his leg be fixed or a more seriously wounded drone wandered in, he could deal with this problem right now.

“Why don’t you let me go and I’ll give you a hand, doc?”

Knock Out cringed. He had forgotten about the human.

“Why don’t you be silent and let the real robot work, little human, and maybe I won’t accidentally cut your voice box out?” Knock Out grabbed the welder and waved it in the human’s face before moving back to the Vehicon.

He bent over what remained of the trooper’s legs and began trying to reroute the bleeding, directing it back to primary functions instead of simply dripping onto the floor. Simply put: welding the smaller Energon lines shut until he could attach new legs.

The sickbay was silent for a few moments. The two slightly-injured Vehicons hesitated, reluctant to disrupt the peace, before going over to the stores of wire mesh and sheeting and began patching themselves up.

Knock Out was halfway done when the door hissed open again and several pairs of pedes stormed in, accompanied by panicked shouting, choked screaming and Energon splattering to the floor.

Without turning around, he slammed the welder down, glad that his patient was in stasis. Out of the corner of his optic he was sure he saw Laserbeak flying in circles around the room.

“I don’t care if Lord Megatron himself is at death’s door right now,” he said, turning as he spoke. “I certainly—”

“I certainly hope that if you are willing to let me bleed out on the operating table, Knock Out,” Megatron said in a voice that sent Knock Out back several steps and his head down, away from the warlord’s optics to quite possibly the only being Megatron would deign to hold in one arm. “You would make an exception for one of your fellow officers.”

With his free hand he beckoned Knock Out forward. The medic stepped closer, realizing the human and every Vehicon was staring at them.

When Knock Out was close enough, Megatron deposited the not-quite-alive body of their communications chief into his arms. 


End file.
